R v Ellis Dismore

This is an appeal against sentence brought by Ellis Dismore following his convictions for 26 offences spanning the years 2015 to 2023, including attempted murder at two trials at Teesside Crown Court.

On 8 January 2025, the offender was sentenced by His Honour Judge Timothy Stead to an extended sentence of 43 years, pursuant to section 279 of the Sentencing Act 2020, comprised of a custodial term of 38 years and an extended licence period of 5 years.

Leave to appeal was granted by the single judge.

The provisions of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 apply to the offences with which we are concerned in this application and no matter relating to any person shall during their lifetime be included in any publication if it is likely to lead members of the public to identify that person as the victim of any of these offences.

In summary, in the years 2015 to 2023, the offender sexually abused and manipulated nine young girls over a lengthy period of time, culminating in an attempt to murder one victim (Victim 9, who we shall refer to as ‘MG’) by stabbing her in the street on 22 June 2023, with a knife purchased that day.

The convictions were as follows:

As described by the trial judge in his sentencing remarks, the offender identified young girls between the ages of 13 and 15 on social networking sites and made repeated contact with them. The offender posed as a teenager himself, which he was at the time of counts 1 to 5 of the first indictment, but the offender persisted with his conduct when he was an adult with respect to counts 6 to 16 on the first indictment and all of the counts on the second indictment. At the time of sentence the offender was 24 years old.

The offender created false identities for himself, indicating to the victims that he was just a friendly teenage boy of similar age. The initial friendliness soon turned very nasty and the offender demanded that the girls send him indecent images and caused a number of them to engage in sexual activity. The offender asked for sex with the girls and employed threats including threats of rape. With one victim the offender made threats to disclose her sexuality to her parents which could have caused her considerable distress. The offender made threats to disclose images and he went through with those threats on a number of occasions. The offender indicated that he knew many biographical details of his victims, which caused them to think they were being watched, and that he could have access to them even though they did not know what he really looked like.

The impact on the victims was serious. In his sentencing remarks the learned judge referred to the distress they suffered:

On 22 June 2023, when MG was on her way home from school, the offender approached her from behind. The offender was in possession of a knife which he had armed himself with to carry out his intention to kill her. The offender feigned distress, and hearing the offender's voice which MG recognised as the person ‘James’ with whom she had been communicating, she was fearful. She tried to speed up and move away from the offender, but was not successful. The offender reached up to her and stabbed her repeatedly in the back. MG sustained multiple stab injuries which put her life in peril. Fortunately for MG, a stranger who was passing by in a car managed to rescue her and take her away. As the trial judge described it, "if it hadn't been for the actions of that woman, this may well and indeed very likely would have been an offence of murder, as you intended."

The learned judge treated the attempted murder as the lead offence, with the sentences for the other offences to be served concurrently.

With respect to count 1 (the lead offence, the attempted murder) the learned judge agreed with the submissions made by counsel for the prosecution and defence that the offence was properly characterised as a category 2A offence in accordance with the Sentencing Guideline for Attempted Murder, for which the starting point is 30 years and has a category range of 25 to 35 years. There was very high culpability because the offence involved the attempted murder of a child and the offence was motivated by sexual conduct. Harm was category 2 because mercifully the harm caused was serious but not as severe as category 1.

The learned judge then explained that the aggravating effect of all the other offending and the facts of the attempted murder itself was very substantial and took the case beyond the category range. The learned judge also stated that the dangerousness provisions applied. The learned judge imposed a sentence for the attempted murder of 43 years, made up of a 38-year custodial term and a 5-year extension. The learned judge also made a number of ancillary orders: notification for life, a deprivation order, restraining orders for all nine victims for life and a sexual harm prevention order.

The offender was represented at the trial and on this appeal by Mr Abrahams. Mr Abrahams has submitted that the offending was exceptionally serious and merited a very lengthy custodial sentence. The attempted murder was correctly treated as the lead offence. Mr Abrahams submitted, however, that the learned judge went too far outside of the upper range for a category 2A attempted murder offence, bearing in mind the age of the offender, his lack of offending and the totality of offending. No criticism was made by Mr Abrahams of the finding of dangerousness or the imposition of an extended licence of 5 years. He submitted, however, that the overall sentence was manifestly excessive.

The respondent was represented at the trial and on this appeal by Mr Dodds. Mr Dodds submitted that the sentence was justified in the circumstances of this case. Those circumstances were, he said, extreme.

In considering this matter we have had regard to the case of R v AYO [2022] EWCA 1271, which contains a discussion of a sentencing regime for very grave sexual offences. At [24] this court referred to a number of cases involving sexual offences and stated that:

In our judgment, sentences of greater length do apply to the present circumstances, where the sexual offending culminated in the almost fatal stabbing of MG, who had spurned the offender and faced his wrathful response.

In the instant case we consider that the sentence imposed by the learned judge was well within the range that was available to him. The offending was especially serious and taking into account the principal of totality, the learned judge was perfectly entitled to go significantly beyond the upper limit of the category range for attempted murder. Indeed, in our judgment, this was a clear case for the learned judge to have imposed a life sentence on the offender.

As we note, for over a period of 8 years from the age of 14, the offender used his computer skills to create false identities, to befriend children aged between 13 and 15, and to coerce or blackmail them into performing sexual acts and send him images which he then not only threatened to share but did share with their friends, family and strangers. The offender stalked his victims, acquiring significant amounts of personal knowledge about them, which he then used together with threats of rape and murder to force them to continue contact. There were, as we have said, nine victims.

In our judgment there was very little mitigation available to the offender. The absence of previous convictions is of no weight given the lengthy period of time over which the offender was carrying out the offences. The offender has been offending for a significant proportion of his life. Furthermore, whilst the initial offences were committed when he was a child, the offender's offending became more entrenched and indeed escalated as he became older and more mature. Accordingly, the appeal is dismissed.

We do note however that, as was stated by Mr Dodds, the stalking offences (counts 2 and 5 on the first indictment) should refer to them having a maximum offence of 5 years given that they took place in part before 3 April 2017 — the date on which the maximum sentence was increased. This makes no difference, however, to the sentence that was imposed for these offences as they fell well within the relevant range.